


Grippe

by kishuku



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26061493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kishuku/pseuds/kishuku
Summary: Andy catches a cold.Nile is nonplussed, but Joe and Nicky are worried.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 82





	Grippe

They’re in Denmark when Andy started to feel tired. She’s been tired for years—decades—but that was the soul weary ache of living too long without a goal or a purpose. This is just a simple exhaustion down to her bones she hasn’t felt in ages, in fact, it’s been so long she doesn’t recognize it for a moment. It wasn’t until she tripped over the threshold of the apartment, Joe grabbing her elbow to keep her from face planting, that she realized just how tired she is.

“I need to sleep,” Andy mumbled as she dropped her bags and started pushing open doors until she found a bedroom. She flopped down on the bed with her boots still on.

Joe and Nicky exchanged a wordless glance as Nile trooped in behind them.

“I’ll go tuck the boss in,” Nicky said, giving Joe a quick kiss and then following Andy into the bedroom.

“Well, if Andy isn’t cooking tonight I guess it’s me,” Joe turned back around, ready to head to the shops for groceries.

“Need company?” Nile asked. She’d never been to Denmark before and she was a little curious.

“You should go. I’ll be fine,” Nicky called out as he reappeared with Andy’s boots.

Joe smiled and gallantly waved his arm for Nile to proceed him through the door back outside. “I was thinking Armenian dolma and rice, a salad if you insist.”

“I insist,” Nicky said as he scooped up their bags and headed back down the hall to investigate the other bedrooms.

“What’s dolma?” Nile asked.

Joe’s smile got wider if possible, “We have a lot to teach you, don’t we?”

~~

Andy skipped dinner. She slept through it, mustering just enough energy to wave a hand when Nicky asked her if they should save her a plate.

When Andy woke up in the middle of the night she was burning up. Someone had taken off her boots, pants, and her long sleeved jacket, but then they’d covered her with a blanket. She weakly kicked off the blanket and squirmed out of her shirt, panting with the effort.

Then a few moments later she was shivering and struggling to get back under the blankets. Her limbs felt swollen and her muscles ached, her body didn’t seem to want to obey her. She swung back and forth between the heat and the cold, her head hurt and her body ached down to its bones.

In the morning when Nicky came to check on her, Andy was covered in sweat, panting, slightly delirious and glassy eyed.

“Andy!” Nicky rushed into the room. “Andy, what’s wrong?” He was slightly wide eyed with panic, in the centuries he’d followed her, he’d never ever seen her like this.

“Feel like shit,” Andy mumbled. “Water.”

He rushed to get her a glass of water, then supported her as she drank. By then, a sleepy tousled Joe was standing in the doorway, his eyes concerned as he took in Andy’s condition.

“What’s wrong?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know.” Nicky said as he rearranged Andy and the blanket.

Nile’s face appeared over Joe’s shoulder, “Is Andy sick?”

“Sick?” Joe and Nicky said at the same time, looking at her incredulously. Joe moved further into the room, so Nile had a better view of Andy.

“Yeah,” Nile glanced back and forth between the two men. “You know, like the flu? Or a cold?”

“We don’t get sick,” Joe said.

“You mean…. With immortality we also get immunity from disease?” Nile asked. “Like you don’t even get a cold or the sniffles?”

“Never,” Nicky supplied.

“Oh,” Nile digested that information for a moment. “Well, if Andy has the flu we could get some medicine. Probably should have a thermometer to check her temperature too.” She looked back and forth between Joe and Nicky again, “I suppose I’ll go to the pharmacy. You two probably don’t have any idea of what to buy anyway.” She left to go change clothes.

“Nile, wait,” Joe trailed behind her.

She paused in the doorway of the room Nicky’d picked for her the night before.

“Is she…. Is this going to kill her?” Joe asked in a whisper. The memories about the scale of death he’d witnessed on the battlefield and in Europe throughout the centuries suddenly resurrecting themselves in his mind’s eye.

Nile opened her mouth, paused, closed it, and tried again. “Normally, I’d say no. But Andy’s a special case, if she hasn’t been exposed to any diseases for the last 6,000 years I don’t know what condition her immune system is. I think I need to call Copley when I get back too. If she’s lost her immunity to disease, the flu may be the least of our concerns.”

Joe only had a vague idea of what Nile was talking about but he nodded anyway.

~~

Andy’s head was on fire. Her headache was so intense her eyeballs ached and she could feel her pulse pounding in her teeth. Her skin was overly sensitive and her muscles throbbed along to the beating of her heart, her joints swollen and achy. Her nose ran and she coughed as though she was attempting to expel her internal organs. Sometimes she had coughing fits so bad she gasped for air until her eyes watered. She moaned, groaned, tossed and turned.

The bed sheets were soaked in sweat after the third day, Nile announced she was going to give Andy a bath while the other two changed the sheets. Andy was so weak and limp she’d almost drowned herself in the bathtub, after the second scare Nile stripped out of her jeans and climbed into the water with Andy so she could support her while she scrubbed Andy’s skin and washed her hair. The water felt fantastic, but after a while Andy started to shiver again as it lost its heat and Nile hauled her out, dried her off, and tucked her back into a clean bed.

Andy drifted in and out of consciousness, someone always at her bedside. Her sleep restless and broken by fits of coughing. No matter how much she drifted in and out of sleep she was always fatigued.

“It’s just the flu,” she mumbled at Joe one time when she’d awoken and found him sitting next to her bed on the floor with Nicky’s head pillowed in his lap. “You two should go sleep in a bed.”

“I’m comfortable right where I am, boss,” Joe replied, turning another page in his book.

“I order you to take Nicky to bed,” Andy mumbled.

Joe paused long enough to look away from his book and raised an eyebrow at her, “Make me.”

Andy knew that was impossible in her current state, but this time when she dozed off she was smiling.

A week after their arrival in Denmark, Andy was sitting up in bed with a cough and scratchy throat, but no longer feverish and with a body full of pain.

“I talked to Copley and he said he’d get together some paperwork for you to get vaccinated,” Nile was telling everyone. She sat perched at the foot of Andy’s bed.

Nicholas had made everyone a cup of hot tea, since he’d made one for Andy.

“Isn’t that going to take years?” Andy asked.

Nile shook her head. “A couple of months, maybe a year. There are a lot of vaccinations you probably won’t need since you’re not a kid and lots of diseases you guys dealt with we don’t vaccinate for anymore.” She checked her phone, “Copley sent me a list of vaccines and he also recommended that we don’t go anywhere where disease outbreaks are common. So no Afghanistan or Sudan until you’re caught up on your shots.”

Andy nodded slowly, this new human fragility still sinking in for her. She’d chosen to live, but it seemed like she was going to have to learn how to in more ways than one.

“Oh, and Copley says you should probably avoid kids for a while,” Nile added as her phone vibrated.

Andy lifted an eyebrow over her mug of tea as though to say: _As if._

Nile’s phone vibrated again, “And don’t listen to anti-vaxxers.”

“What’s that?” Joe asked.

“I’ve got a lot to teach you, haven’t I?” Nile smirked.


End file.
